Art of the Odd

Following up on yesterday’s post – I didn’t intend to be Sarah Palin this Halloween. And actually, I wasn’t Sarah Palin. I was Caribou Barbie, which I first read as a disparaging reference to the gun-wielding governor of Alaska, and later heard is something she calls herself. In either case, I didn’t actually decide on the costume until Friday morning, but once I’d put it all together, I decided to enter it in Susie Bright’s Screamin’ Sarah Palin Costume Contest.

This afternoon, I got an email from Susie. I’m a finalist. I’m floored. But what did I do? Well, I didn’t even blink. I just pulled up my PitBull Panties and emailed her right back, with a quick rundown on how I became Caribou Barbie, and what it took to get me there.

“Yay!” I said. “I’m so excited!

“I’m a last-minute kind of person, so it was Friday morning that I said to my husband, ‘If I’d thought of it earlier, I could have been Caribou Barbie.’ Then, riding my bike to Albertson’s to pick up some Halloween candy (like I said, I’m a last-minute person), I realized that all I needed for the costume was a shiny blonde wig, and a way to attach some antlers to the silver plastic tiara I already owned. So, I left Albertson’s and headed north on Lincoln Blvd., to the Spirit store, where I found a ‘Trixie’ wig that looked perfect. At home, I found my suede-and-faux fur boots, my faux-fur collared jacket and a dress (I’d intended on a short green dress, but wound up in a long black dress with one side of the skirt pinned up to show the boots).

“The antlers were a bit of a challenge. My first idea was to use a pair that my husband worked into a headdress a couple of years ago. He put screws through a heavy leather belt and into the base of the antlers, then padded it with an old bandanna. Those antlers are big and heavy, though, and I remember the weight gave him a headache. We do have a smaller set of antlers, which I also considered, but then he told me I could try making some with rolled-up newspaper and masking tape. I didn’t have much luck with that (he’s much craftier than I am, and he wasn’t home), but in trying to find some online instructions that might help, I found this adorable necklace holder. Two wire coat hangers, some blue masking tape, silver spray paint and glitter and I had a set of shiny antlers, which I attached to the tiara with pink zip ties. I also used pink zip ties to attach the tiara to the wig.

“I loved putting the whole thing together, and I was ridiculously proud of myself that I’d managed to do it all at the very last minute. (I don’t think I could have done it if I didn’t work from home!) My husband quite liked the blonde wig, which surprised me. (Though he hasn’t yet asked me to wear it to bed.) No one at the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval seemed to “get” the costume (someone did say “Hi, Reindeer!” to me, and someone did ask me what I was “trying to be.” She looked confused when I told her.) It’s not the first time I’ve developed a costume I had to explain, though, so I didn’t mind.

“I won’t be wearing it Tuesday* – I’m volunteering on the Election Protection hotline (www.866ourvote.org or 1-866-Our-Vote), and it’s very important that we appear non-partisan, but I think I will wear a version of it for the next Labyrinth of Jareth Masquerade – though I might skip the furry coat, and add fairy wings.”

*Susie does intend to wear her Sarah Palin costume to the polls on Tuesday.

Just to make it clear what we’re watching tonight. George C. Scott looks nothing like Angelina Jolie.

Last night was the West Hollywood Halloween crush. NovySan’s daughter hadn’t ever been, so off we went. We had to park a good two miles away (and unfortunately, the daughter in question was wearing heels), and even though we walked right by 8 Oz. Burger, we decided it would take too long to sit down and eat. So, we found an excellent taco truck in front of a gas station, and fortified with burritos and tortas, forged on to La Cienega.

If you look at the video closely, you probably still can’t make out the protesters in front of the laser show. They weren’t protesting the lasers – they were protesting fun. Homosexuality, yes, but also a long list of other sins, all of which would be punished in fire and vengeance. They were quiet, though, and the crowd seemed to be leaving them alone. At the end, some of you will recognize NovySan, as a Chaplin impersonator (a very specific Chaplin impersonator – his great-grandfather, in fact), and his daughter (who morphed during the course of the day from an undead pin-up to a vintage Bond girl).

And me? I was Caribou Barbie.

(I did manage to get that left antler bent into a more natural shape this morning. The basic shape cam from Crafting for Cheapskates.)

I started to tell this story over on LA Metblogs, in response to a post by The Eight Track Kid (a.k.a. Be the Boy) called “The Best Deal in Porno History,” but as it got longer, I decided it made more sense just to post it over here.

I worked at a book/video/hobby store in my home town (which was sadly driven under when a mega-chain came to town – though that might not have happened had the woman who owned it not been quite such a dragon) that had an excellent selection of porn mags (this is where I first saw both “Barely Legal” and “Perfect Ten”), an oddly dated selection of porn flicks (I think the owner stopped buying them around 1985), and, at one time, a very broad selection of porn novels (they were gone by the time I worked there, but one of my friend’s mothers had a trunkful of them).

Anyway, it was a small town, and occasionally, something would happen that would make the owners twitchy about the porn selection. (Actually, the old lady never mentioned the porn. The old man was in charge of the porn. They were both Mormon. I’m not sure if that’s relevant here.) Years before I worked there, for instance, someone smashed the front window and stole all the porn mags as a protest against pornography. (Seriously!) The police recovered them, but of course they had to hold them as “evidence,” and they never made their way back to the store. During the subsequent media flap (as much as you can flap a single newspaper that rarely ran more than 30 pages, including the Classifieds), everything but “Penthouse” and “Playboy” came off the shelf.

The old man told me this story while he was clearing the shelves again. This time, a major local kerfuffle had erupted over a local bar’s decision to bring some (*gasp*) strippers up from Denver. (Yes, we had to import strippers.) Some stick-ass who’d walked past the bar during the show claimed he’d seen them grinding their naked naughty bits and insisted that something had to be done. (Never mind that the windows of this particular bar were covered in blackout paper even when there weren’t any strippers inside. Either he was lying about seeing them, or he was lying about seeing them from outside.) The city council heeded the call of their outraged constituency, and drafted an anti-obscenity statute which was justly ridiculed for outlawing not only those filthy out-of-state strippers, but also artistic nudes, theatrical nudity (I’m sure the university’s theatre department was thumbing its nose at them when they mounted “Equus” a few years later) and teenaged boys’ boners. (It quite specifically stated that no man could appear in public, clothed or unclothed, in a “discernibly turgid” state. Of course someone immediately printed up t-shirts that said “Discernibly Turgid.” The bear at the Fireside wore one for years.)

The measure was eventually defeated, but meanwhile, the old man took most of the more “interesting” magazines off the shelves and moved the entire stock of porn flicks to the back room. A few customers asked where they’d gone, and we’d explain they were just hiding out until the city council decided whether nudity was to be allowed in the Gem City of the Plains. Most of our customers, though, were far too shy to even mention their absence. Not Our Very Best Porn Customer, though. Our Very Best Porn Customer came in almost every day to get his fix. Tuesdays and Wednesdays were two-for-one (and oh, how I did love tormenting those blushing college boys who could barely bring themselves to rent a porno from a girl, by telling them they could get another for the same price), and so every Tuesday and Wednesday, without fail, he’d rent two and sometimes four porn tapes. Now, as I’ve said, the owner hadn’t bought anything new in quite some time – and you mustn’t think he’d bought a lot when he was still buying. I don’t think we had more than 100 pornos in the whole store. One of my coworkers figured it up once and realized that Our Very Best Porn Customer had seen every porn tape we had at least four times, and he’d seen his favorites much more often. During the great porn drought, he still came in almost every day, asking if the porn was back, and consoling himself with R-rated movies that might at least give him a bit of boob.

After a few months of this, the old man finally made his decision. All of the magazines went back on the shelf, but the porn tapes – the porn tapes had to go. Our Very Best Porn Customer was first in line. He nearly staggered under the weight of his purchases. Star 85. The Italian Stallion. (So well-loved that its original cover was long gone – it lived in a plain plastic box with a xeroxed picture of Sly Stallone stuck to the front.) All of his favorites, many of his stand-bys, and a few he said he’d never even watched. (So much for my colleague’s math skills.)

And that is my two-for-one porn story. What’s yours?